


atlas: the burden of love

by lightningmcqveer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt Obi-Wan Kenobi, Obi-Wan Kenobi Needs a Hug, Obi-Wan Kenobi Whump, Obi-Wan Kenobi is a Mess, fruity behaviour hey obi wan are you bisexual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-18 05:13:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29604369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightningmcqveer/pseuds/lightningmcqveer
Summary: the negotiator deals with the fallout, the jedi master copes with his mistakes, and obi-wan kenobi pays the price of love.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Infinite Sadness
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	atlas: the burden of love

after nine years on tattooine, he mused, one would have to grow accustomed to sand. a jedi master of the highest calibre, an esteemed general of the war accustomed to most, if not all, coarse terrains; one could expect someone like that to be able to handle some sand. 

but obi-wan hadn't been that person in a decade.

but he supposed it's years of that training that didn't have him flinch when he felt a familiar presence beside him, a teasing, blinding force, that almost had him tearing his head to the side, desperate to drink in any sight of—

"can't even bear to look at me, master?" 

and he closed his eyes tighter, clenched, unclenched his trembling hands, hoping that he— the presense would leave. but obi-wan knew better, knew this desert had no mercy. 

if he still had had his impeccably dry ( _and completely unnecessary, master, for force's sake canyounot?!_ ) sense of humour, he would have found the irony amusing; the same planet that had started everything was the one he ended up on. 

if he had known in his first visit to this rotten hellhole that he would spend the rest of his days there, obi-wan would have done his absolute best to be the one maul murdered, not _them._

names, he remembered, had power. especially on a slave planet like tattooine. he hadn't been one to agree or disagree with the notion but it eventually proved true in his inability to even whisper a name without choking on it. 

if he went down that hole, obi-wan feared he would never find himself again. 

often he wondered if that statement too was just a lie he told himself, a lie to keep pretences, a lie to not let his regrets overtake him completely. 

because jedi did not fear but was obi-wan a jedi at all? 

a perfect one, he'd been called, mockingly, reverently, truthfully. but he had had his own feelings, ones he condemned, ones that held him by the neck, ones he could barely stand under, their crippling weight dragging him six feet deep.

a whole lifetime, yet the intensity of his yearning still left him repulsed. 

_had you said the word, i would have left the jedi order_. 

obi-wan's eyes opened against his better judgement to an empty hut, drawn unconsciously to the chest in the corner, and he couldn't breathe. 

the presence was there, like a hand offered, coaxing him, consoling him. 

he reached out instinctively to a bond long gone, to startling emptiness, the absense of a whole, to a constant ache in a phantom limb. 

anakin, he sobbed.

the first and foremost of the people he failed. his best friend, his partner, his padawan, his anakin; and in an instant, obi-wan was back in burning red scenery, sweat and dirt and blood all on him, screaming _i loved you_ too late, always too late. 

i still do, he wants to say, with feverishness unfitting of the famed obi-wan kenobi, but he supposed the admission itself is wild enough. i love you, i always have. 

realistically, he knows he cannot go back. realistically, he knows he cannot rewrite history anymore than he can stop the twin suns from rising. but obi-wan is human and humans are willfully pathetic, so he wishes he had confessed all of his secrets, all of his sins earlier. 

for once, he didn't care about the punishment. the crime of wanting, the shameful contentment that came with being wanted. just the relief, the comfort he would have gotten from acceptance, of emotions he repressed, of walls and walls of facades, of himself. 

the cognization of his longing had been inevitable, there was only so many times he could look truth ( _and grief. oh, so much grief_ ) in the eye before even he broke down in front of it, decades of trauma so buried they became another of his ghosts. 

time is cruel, vicious when paired with regret and the unlimited imagination of a brain. he spends days in a nostalgic chokehold, in a world where he made it, crossed red blades before they took all that were precious, all that were his dearest. 

time heals all wounds but obi-wan felt like an orifice, unable to find closure, just taking in more and more pain to pacify the hollowness in him. 

a negotiator beyond peer, yet obi-wan couldn't even deal with his own bubbling hysteria. 

what good had all of his efforts been if they led him back here? what good were timely and just decisions, what good was the order if all that was left of it was an exiled master and him, a broken husk of a man, alive to make up for the mistakes of generations? 

spectres of all those who were gone willed him to stay, when did loneliness pity him so it became his only companion? 

even that was no reassurance, for he couldn't think of them without remorse, couldn't remember their laughter or the way they held him without despairing that he was there and they were not, without wanting to throw himself down and begging for absolution, apologizing for being the way he was. 

his mere existence; a stigma. 

these days, he flinched most when he met shmi skywalker's wistful blue eyes and his mind inadvertently travelled to yellow slits and anger and _I HATE YOU._

attachment was— _is_ forbidden, he repeated. he was a slave to his devotion and he always would be. his weakness led to all their deaths, over and over like a mantra, to make him feel something other than numb and tortured. 

abruptly, he got up from his mediating pose. it did not bring him peace anymore, just memories he couldn't silence. 

he walked out into the cold night, head immediately inclined to a small, bright slumbering presence. 

luke, he smiled, and it was easier to breathe. 

luke, he told himself, was worth it. his bright hair and blue eyes and tendency to get into trouble sometimes made it hard to look at him, but obi-wan had promised a long time ago not to see father in son. 

he was padme's son too, and that was one name obi-wan would not forsake. 

luke was light, all gentle and good. he wanted to bask in it, feel solace in his soft shades. 

he hadn't wanted to give luke to the lars. 

it was foolish of him to want so, but he had wanted to raise the boy himself. he wouldn't have failed this time, not luke skywalker. 

but the fact that he was there alone was enough proof of his misgivings, the disappointment he caused an entire galaxy. 

then he looked at his hands, hands of a jedi, a war general, hands of one obi-wan kenobi and all he could see was blood. 

he wasn't deserving of holding light in the same hands that had done nothing while his father's light was ravaged. 

he couldn't hold luke with the same hands that had held qui-gon, satine, and padme as they died. 

his hands were not clean, his beliefs were crumbling, his whole world had tilted on its axis, and he knew with deep rooted melancholy that he had to give luke up. 

but as he handed him over, obi-wan felt something akin to another heartbreak, and wondered how many times misery could eat him raw 

he looked down at sand, felt it sift through his fingers, into his robes, and wondered if his reflection would be as wizened as he felt. 

sand, it seemed, was ingrained deep into him, like infinite sadness. 

if this horrible sickness was love then obi-wan didn't want any of it. if the memories of all that was beloved and gone didn't leave him hungry and furious like never before, obi-wan didn't want to keep them. 

the complexities of the self, not so wholly broken, not so wholly him, like shards of a mirror that echoed how separated he was. 

he was no longer a jedi, not with all the rage he carried in him. but obi-wan didn't know how to _not_ be a jedi, didn't know who he was beyond it. all those titles yet he didn't know who he was, who he had been. 

obi-wan had not burned in mustafar's unforgiving fire, but he had died in it. what was reborn from those ashes had just exchanged one eternal burn for another, the heat of dual suns. 

a breeze shifted through his auburn hair. 

"careful, master. it gets colder here at night than you'd expect it to."

when tears did drop down obi-wan kenobi's face, only the desert moons knew, the pleas for forgiveness, the prayers of a faithless man, to go home, one that was no longer there. 

and one that had never been. 

**Author's Note:**

> alternatively titled: how much i can project on my comfort character and land myself in a world of pain


End file.
